Woman.

We have been conditioned to think that feelings, emotions, crying, loving, are things for women. That they are inherently “girly” things, and girly is bad. “Girly” is used as a bad word.

If feeling and loving and living is girly which actually means bad, it must be awfully dull to be a male. Men trap themselves in this box of keeping everything inside until they explode, but they don’t have to. To clarify right away: I don’t hate men at all, but I don’t understand the standards they set for themselves, much less for us.

I am not ashamed to be a woman, I am not ashamed to feel. Rather, feeling is not exclusive to women. Men feel too, they just choose to ignore it for their backwards view of masculinity. It must be why they tend to be so violent or at least be considered to have such tendencies, they’re emotionally stifled. Gentlemen, you don’t have to live that way though. You don’t have to let yourself be conditioned by society. You don’t have to limit yourself, and you don’t have to limit women either by what society tells us we should be.

Men and women alike are complicated creatures. Gender has a few minor differences in our physicality, but our brains develop uniquely regardless of sex. Humans are complicated and it’s not black and white or pink and blue between us.

It’s okay to sing, dance, cry, perform ballet, and be honest and upfront about your feelings. It’s okay to talk out your problems and be there for your guy friends. It’s okay to be affectionate with those you love and it’s okay to be open to affection. There is no rule anywhere that says softness and kindness and vulnerability and openness and feelings and honesty and love are for women only, or that you’re abandoning your masculine identity if you do those things.

You let society limit you and you limit yourself. You can change the definition of what it means to be masculine, you don’t have to accept it as a stifled, toxic thing. You can be a man and have good, gentle, kind qualities. None of these qualities should be exclusive to women only.

I’m content to be made a woman. Nothing about me is any less worthy because I’m a woman. Likewise to men. In society, we are equals. We limit only ourselves regarding what is inherently masculine or feminine.